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Naghmeh Samini was born in Iran and received her BA in Drama and MA in Cinema both from the University of Tehran. She earned her PhD in Drama and mythology. More than twenty of her plays have been staged in Iran, France, and India, and some have received readings in the United Kingdom and the U.S. This award-winning playwright has also written several screenplays. She has been working as a professor at the University of Tehran since 2005 and has ...

Guest Speakers: Omid Behbahani, Bahram Beyzaie, Farzaneh Milani, Marie Ostby and Kaveh Safa
Bahram Beyzaie: "Poem reading in memory of Simin Behbahani"
Bahram Beyzaie is one of Iran's most acclaimed filmmakers, playwrights, and scholars of the history of Iranian theater, both secular and religious. He was a leader of the generation of filmmakers known as the Iranian New Wave, beginning in the late 1960s, and has since directed more than a ...

Award Recipient: Iraj Pezeshkzad
Iraj Pezeshkzad was born in Tehran in 1928, and educated in Iran and France where he received his degree in Law. He served as a judge in the Iranian Judiciary for five years prior to joining the Iranian Foreign Service. He began writing in the early 1950s by translating the works of Voltaire and Molière into Persian and by writing short stories for magazines. His novels include Haji Mam-ja'far in Paris, and ...

Bahram Beyzaie is one of Iran's most acclaimed filmmakers, playwrights, and scholars of the history of Iranian theater, both secular and religious. He was a leader of the generation of filmmakers’ known as the Iranian New Wave, beginning in the late 1960s, and has since directed more than a dozen prize-winning films. He has also conducted pioneering research into the roots of ancient legends derived from Indo-Iranian mythology and known ...

For the past seven years, we have been giving an annual award, named the Bita Prize for Persian Letters. The winners have been some of the most prominent Iranian writers, poets, vocalists, and playwrights of our time—from Simin Behbahani and Mohammad Reza Shajarian (the first the poet laureate of the people and the second the country's most beloved vocalist), to Bahram Beyzaie (the eminent film-maker and playwright) and Mahshid Amirshahy (the ...

Film screening of Kamran Shirdel’s films:Women’s Quarter 1966-1980 (18 min) Women’s Prison 1965 (11 min) Tehran is the Capital of Iran 1966-1980 (18 min)The Night it Rained 1967 (35 min)Films with English subtitles
Kamran Shirdel was born in Tehran 1939. He studied architecture and design in the University of Rome and film direction at Centro Sperimentale di Cinematografia (CSC), also in the eternal city. During his studies he had Roberto ...

Guests: Sheila Banani, Firuz Kazemzadeh, Bahiyyih Nakhjavani, Wali Ahmadi, John Eilts, Bahram Beyzaie and Abbas Milani
“In Memory of Amin Banani: A life in letters and Iranian Studies”
Event in English
Professor Amin Banani was one of the first Iranians to receive a Ph.D. in history from Stanford University. He went on to a sterling career in founding the Iranian Studies Program at UCLA, he remained an engaged Stanford Alumni and an avid ...

The Bita Daryabari Endowment in Persian Letters, in the Iranian Studies Program will present the Sixth Annual Bita Prize for Persian Arts on Friday, November 15th, 2013.
The recipient of this year's Bita Prize for Persian Arts is Ms. Mahshid Amirshahy
Guest: Mahshid Amirshahy
Mahshid Amirshahy was a prodigy when she published her first short stories as a teenager—stories at once defiant, deliberate and disciplined. Over an illustrious career ...

Reza Ghassemi is an artist of myriad talents and many accomplishments. He is a prize-winning playwright, director, and novelist. He is also an accomplished musician--a master sitar player and composer. He has lived in Paris since 1986, where some of his novels have been translated into French and his plays performed on stage and French television. He will be talking about and reading from the novel he is currently working on.
Some of his ...

Workshop in Iranian Studies.
Instructor: Bahram Beyzaie
The five series workshop will be based on the following topics: 2/21: THE MEANING OF SHAHNAMEH AS A SOCIAL WORK2/28: NON WRITTEN MYTHS OF PRE-SHAHNAMEH PERIOD 3/7: THE CREATION OF MANKIND AND AFTER3/14: ANALYTIC VIEW OF THE LEGEND OF ROSTAM AND SOHRAB 3/16: IRANIAN MYTHS IN TRADITIONAL SPECTACLES (WATCH ALL WORKSHOP VIDEOS ON IRANIAN STUDIES YOUTUBE CHANNEL)
Bahram Beyzaie is one of the ...